The Contrary Mind?

Does it ever seem to you that your subconscious mind is in a world of its own, focusing on vistas of which you are unaware?**

And... does your subconscious mind seem a bit contrary?*

Yesterday I decided I'd had enough of the super-slow rowing while watching DVD episodes of that TV series which shall remain unnamed because it is irrelevant to these short thoughts being expressed. So I "binged" on the remaining episodes and finished viewing the remaining four 40 minute installments of the series.  I did that, so that TODAY I'd be free to focus completely on rowing while rowing.

For today's rowing, I decided to do a half marathon and set a new season best time.  That would be easy, since the only other HM I've done in the first 4 days of this new season was done in a super slow time of about 2 hours 48 minutes. To give you an idea of how slow that is, notice (below) that it placed me in absolute last among those men in my age & weight class who've also ranked their HMs this season.

But at least that made everyone, including Mr. Benezra of New Jersey, happy - to know that they and he had all finished their HMs with a better time than someone...

So I decided to do today's half marathon at a strict, constant pace target of 2:15.  It would be an experiment to see how it felt after a distance equal to halfway through a marathon at the pace at which I'd like to do a dreaded marathon before May 15th.

*Frequently, if I determine to do a race or set a new season best time, my subconscious will start to make itself known in a contrary fashion. Quite contrary...

...it won't stop and it will make increasingly louder and more pained demands that I either slack off or quit, both of which are opposite and contrary to my original intentions. 

Today, my subconscious mind started making itself known after about 10K but -contrarily as usual- it didn't want me to slow down.  I was already going slow.  It wanted me to go faster. 

It didn't become loud or pained, but it wouldn't settle down until the compromise to which I agreed, which seemed to satisfy it.  The compromise was to do a sprint of some sort for the very last 500 meters.  When that was decided, it seemed happy enough to know that I'd go faster for a mere 2% of the total distance and it quit bothering me.

**What was my subconscious mind focusing on, or was it merely "feeling its oats?"

Is the subconscious mind the horse or the jockey?

 Anyway... the subconscious mind is happy with that HM, as far as I can tell based on the light from within.

The half marathon went well and felt good. Felt okay... to be specific. And after it was ranked on Concept2.com World Rankings for this season, it moved me up from last place to 7th place.  Poor Mr. B of New Jersey... now he's going to have to work a little harder, to get out of last place... if he cares.  But I looked at his profile on the C2 rankings and he looks like a jaunty, competitive sort who probably does care and will make another go at it, to get out of last place. Here are the new standings after today's piece was ranked:

And here are some screen views and session reports (reports is plural, because there was a separate warm down session today, made necessary by the final sprint I had to do in order to please my contrary subconscious).

The session was scheduled online, over an hour in advance but still there were no others who could join at that time. The following is a screen shot of 5 minutes before the half marathon began, where you can see that I invited the others in the online chat room to join if they wished.

The view below is the half marathon finish screen:

Next is a view of the half marathon session report:

And the warm down finish screen...

...and finally, the warm down session report:

As Dale Evans and Roy Rogers used to sing, "happy rowing to you until we meet again." Or was it "happy trails?"